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‘LHC day’ was highest profile physics event in history

IF YOU felt that you couldn’t get away from coverage of the LHC last week, you were right.

An estimated television audience of 1 billion watched as beams of protons made their first 27-kilometre laps of the particle smasher. On 10 September alone 5853 articles about the LHC were published worldwide. “It is quite overwhelming,” says CERN spokesman James Gillies. “We weren’t just on the news, we were top of the news.”

Physicists hope that what is probably the highest profile event in their history will inspire the next generation. “We expect a sort of ‘Sputnik effect’,” says CERN theorist …